Beatrice Reece, Lady Fenwick, has retired from polite society. Everyone knows her late husband treated her abominably, and she simply cannot bear the whispers of the ton. But it’s the night of London’s premier masquerade ball-and Beatrice’s one chance to revel in anonymity. She hopes no one will recognize her beneath her mask, not even the sinfully sexy stranger across the room who holds her captive in his gaze . . .

Andrew Sinclair would know beautiful Beatrice anywhere from the gentle sway of her hips, the richness of her hair, and the lushness of her body. When he asks her to dance, the attraction is instant and all-consuming. The only woman he’s ever truly wanted is finally in his arms. But when the clock strikes twelve, will this one reckless night fade into the morning light?

“What do you find fascinating, my lady?” he asked quietly. He knelt down and slipped her muddy slipper off her foot before setting it aside.

“You,” she answered honestly.

He smiled at that. It was an arrogant, supremely masculine smile. “Good. But what else?”

She looked away from him. But some part of her didn’t want to lie to him or evade his questions. “I have always been fascinated by food,” she admitted quietly.

“Food? Do you mean its preparation or its consumption?” He chafed the cold, damp skin of her foot between his hands to warm it.

“Its preparation,” she clarified. “As in, how to combine ingredients in a way that makes them most pleasing to a person’s palate.”

He looked intrigued. He bent down to kiss the top of her foot, his lips warm and soft. No one had ever kissed her there before, and it was…erotic. It made her pulse flutter and her cheeks burn with a flush.

He sat on the sofa beside her and stretched his long legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “So…you are a cook?”

“Not in a professional capacity,” she said. “But I enjoy going into the kitchen and collaborating with our cook.”

She looked away, eyes downcast, afraid of his reaction. No one of her class, except Jessica and her family, had ever accepted her fascination with cooking. The world in general believed that cooking was far below Beatrice’s station. She was lucky Cook allowed her into the kitchen at all.

“Look at me,” he commanded softly. Pressing one finger against her cheek, he turned her head to face him. “I’d like to taste one of your creations,” he said. The backs of his fingers stroked her cheeks. “A lemon pudding, perhaps.”

He trailed the finger from her cheek, down the front of her neck, and over her breast, gently swiping over her nipple. Even through the fabric of her clothes, the sensation was so strong she gasped aloud.

“Perhaps,” he said quietly, “I could lay you naked on our bed and eat the pudding off your skin.”

She shuddered.

“I’d lick off every bit of the sweetness, but that wouldn’t work, would it? Because once the pudding was gone, your skin would be even sweeter.”

Her eyes fluttered shut. He’d just given her the most erotic image of her life. Herself, lying naked across a bed while he licked lemon pudding from her skin.

His lips curved. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to lick a sweet confection from your body.”

She gave a ghost of a nod, and his fingers swiped over her nipple again. She wrapped her fingers around the wrist of the hand that was touching her. “Wait. I…I want…”

“What do you want? Do you want me to take you back to the masquerade? Or…” He let the question hang, but she knew what he had been going to say.

Or do you want to stay?

And here it was. This was the moment of truth. Her universe balanced on a single point, and she had the power to choose. For once in her life, she was the master of her own destiny. This man wanted her—she could see it in the deep glint of his eyes, in the tightness of his jaw, in his posture, bristling with maleness. But he wouldn’t force himself on her. He was a gentleman, and if she wanted him to, he’d take her back to Jessica immediately.

Undercover agent Sam Hawkins has devoted his life to protecting king and country. So when he receives orders to assassinate a ruthless traitor, he doesn’t question his mission. But Sam didn’t know his deed had a witness–the beautiful and mysterious betrayer’s wife. Now he has no choice but to take her as his prisoner-one he can neither trust . . . nor resist.

Élise, Lady Dunthorpe, will do anything to escape her powerful captor–including seducing him senseless. She didn’t know of her miserable husband’s crimes, but she has secrets of her own, secrets that threaten everything she holds dear. With his piercing dark eyes and gentle touch, Sam inflames Élise’s deepest desires, but how could she ever trust a man who won’t let her go? Caught between the crown he’s sworn to serve and the woman he’s come to love, Sam will risk his heart–and his very life–to keep her safe.

As a child, Jennifer Haymore traveled the South Pacific with her family on their homebuilt sailboat. The months spent on the sometimes quiet, sometimes raging seas sparked her love of adventure and grand romance. Since then, she’s earned degrees in computer science and education and held various jobs ranging from bookselling to teaching inner-city children to acting, but she’s never stopped writing.

You can find Jennifer in Southern California trying to talk her husband into yet another trip to England, helping her three children with homework while brainstorming a new five-minute dinner menu, or crouched in a corner of the local bookstore writing her next novel.